Merry Christmas. Thank you for a wonderful 2013!!!

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2013 has been a great year for us and this could not have been done without your help. September 2013 saw the first official major fundraising event of the Donkor foundation. Isaac Donkor, along with fellow board members charl Wolmarans and Jenny Ford and friends Dottie and Chrissy Jones and John Allred, competed in the extremely challenging Tough Mudder event in Lake Tahoe, California. The event was a bigger success than we could have imagined with the team completing the event and raising just over $25,000 in the process.
The day started off very cold for the whole team as they were one of the first to begin the race. One of the first obstacles the team had to go through was crawling through a tunnel half submerged in freezing water. With temperatures hovering around 35 degrees this made the remainder of the event extremely difficult. The course was spread over 13 miles of uphill and downhill terrain, with obstacles such as 15 foot jumps into yet more cold water and electric probe runs,
After just over 2 hours of pure torture, our team crossed the finish line together and collected their finishers T shirts and a well-earned beer!!!
The Donkor Foundation is extremely grateful to everyone who participated and to all our sponsors and donors for raising such a large amount of money for the children in Ghana.
 
October/November 2013- Clinics!!!!
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The Donkor Foundation ran its annual free tennis clinics in Ghana this past month.
Isaac Donkor travelled to Ghana at the end of October to run four clinics this year, one more than last year.
Collection of equipment started a couple of weeks beforehand, with Isaac and Michelle traveling to Greenwich to collect all the donations that people had collected for us over the past year. We would like to express a special thank you to Matt Majier-Johnson, who collected a huge amount of sports equipment, clothes and rackets from Brunswick school. Proform Tennis Academy for their donation of rackets, hoodies and balls and Jay Gooding who has been supporting us with donations for the past 3 years.
After sorting through all the goods, Isaac left for Ghana with 6 bags stuffed with all the generous donations from our supporters.
Our first clinic took place in Accra and was a great success, with over 70 children attending. Food and drinks were provided for every child that attended as well as every child leaving with something from our donations!dtef 074

Isaac then travelled to Kumasi and Tacoradi with a team of 5 coaches, one of which is Herman Abban, a young up and coming player who has been with the foundation since it started and has shown a huge improvement in his tennis.
Both clinics had a great turn out and the children played games, learnt about technique and above all had fun. The foundation managed to get sponsorship for the first time this year, with each tennis club providing free food and drink to the kids and supporting the coaches with accommodation.

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For the first time the foundation was able to expand its clinics to four this year, with Obwasi being added to our agenda.
The coaches took a long bus ride, 6 hours, to get to the venue. They were greeted very warmly and provided with accommodation and excitement from the children.
The club was buzzing with activity and our team of coaches put on a fun filled clinic for the children. Again, food and drink were provided and the last of the donation rackets, clothing and equipment were distributed amongst the children.
Overall we had the most successful event to date with more clinics and more children attending than ever before.
The media and television crews were set up at each clinic to film the day’s activities and Isaac conducted several TV and radio interviews promoting awareness and goals of the foundation.

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Checking on the building of the Facility is also a big part of the trip. Two of our courts were complete but due to the extreme rainy season in Ghana we had been delayed in putting down the paint. We are pleased to say that is now being done as well as the locker rooms and the prepping for the other two courts. We have met some unexpected obstacles in the building and development of our facility, our most recent being the need to build a fence around the courts to stop the goats walking across the still wet paint!!!!!
We would like to thank our dedicated team of coaches for their hard work during the two week trip and for the children and parents for coming out and having so much fun with us. Our supporters and donors for making all this possible…without you we would not be able to run these events and make a huge amount of children very happy.

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MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

 

 

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